


The Birthday Disaster

by myshelovka



Category: Birthday Party (Band), Blixa Bargeld (Musician)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Dealing, Drugs, Everyone Is Gay, Genital Piercing, Gun Violence, McDonald's, Milkshakes, Musicians, Profanity, Psychological Cock & Ball Torture, Rowland has Stress Dreams about Yegor Letov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 15:04:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18995023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myshelovka/pseuds/myshelovka
Summary: The story of a very, very bad night in 1938.





	The Birthday Disaster

They had to stop, after all, they were practically running on empty (and Tracy’s bladder was running on full-to-bursting). This “Special K Mart”, this collapsing building with defective lights that marred their signs, was the only gas station they had seen on these hellish Bavarian backroads, and although it was overwhelmingly sketchy in appearance, it was better than having to steal another van.

The gang had their white algae-covered van parked horizontally with a gas pump in front of it. Earlier, Tracy had gone inside earlier in search of a bathroom while Mick went in to procure a copious amount of chewing gum and pay for gas - and it was quite a shock when they both came out alive and unharmed, and even more of a shock when Tracy apparently had to climb into a manhole in the parking lot to access the men’s bathroom.

Phil had volunteered to be the gas-pumper despite the less-than-ideal parking, and Nick and the other guy, NOT Rowland, stayed in the car. Rowland, was off stretching his spindly legs and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with dubious contents, observing everyone around him. He didn’t have much else to do, as Nick tore up all his books during a bad trip, a memory that still filled the young man with pure, unadulterated rage. He glanced at one of the large, tacky clocks that was super-glued to the doors and windows of the gas station, and he had to squint very hard since it was dark outside and he was also very bad at reading the letters on clocks, and the time read “2:62”, in the afternoon, he presumed. Despite the presence of the moon and the absence of the sun, he assumed it was just a particularly dreary afternoon. Rowland was also not particularly good with reading the sky.

Nick was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open, sterilized needle in hand, loudly chattering with the weird German entity (Blixa, wasn’t it?) as he “pumped” his “gas”. His black trousers were around his ankles and Rowland watched on as he effortlessly gave himself a Prince Albert, which his German friend was fortunate not to witness due to having his black Hello Kitty eye mask over his eyes at the time. Rowland resisted the urge to double over and start screaming and/or crying and made himself avert his gaze from the van, and it hit him there wasn’t much else to look at beyond the decrepit gas-station, or at naked Mick, who was leaning against a gas pump while he waited on Tracy to emerge from the bathroom-manhole he crawled into.

Within moments, a meaty fist with a little cowboy hat on top burst through the manhole, sending the manhole cover careening around the gas station lodged itself into the “ **HOT DOGS** ” sign and reducing it simply to “ **DOGS** ”.

Tracy clambered out, the sounds of metal banging echoing throughout the inside of the manhole, followed by a shrill “wunderbar!” coming from the van behind them.

“Welcome back to Chermany,” Mick greeted with an acknowledging nod and an unwelcoming, ingenuine smile.

“Fucking hell, goddammit, kurwa, I can’t fucking take this shit,” Tracy muttered in Australian, brushing past Mick and Rowland.

Phil came out from the shadows of the van.

“Are we good to go?” he asked, but then the cowboy just fucking decked him. The poor fuck. The poor stupid fuck.

“Hey-“ Mick tried to step closer but Tracy shoved him across the parking lot and he slammed back-first into one of the clocks, prompting Rowland to run over to Mick.

“Oy vey, Steve Harvey! Are you o-“ Mick snarled and kicked Rowland back towards Tracy before he could finish his sentence, and as Rowland used the momentum from being very violently kicked to land a very violent right hook on their rock’n’roll Achilles in a cowboy hat, and then he just stood there and kept punching him. Tracy was obviously unfazed and simply flecked Rowland off like the little insect he is. Phil tried to get up and Rowland the Roach Boy blindly lunged at him and pulled at his hair while making angry wildcat noises, to which Phil responded with pained yipping noises. Mick nakedly ran towards them nakedly and lunged at them, disrupting their tussle and creating an even worse one. Even Nick had started paying attention to the writhing mass on the floor.

An awful, noisy human-knot was formed as they tangled together and beat each other and bit each other’s fingers, screeching and snarling at each other and at nothing in particular. Without warning, Tracy grabbed one of Rowland’s legs and lifted the entire knot into the air and swung them around, bashing them into the gas pumps and onto the asphalt beneath them. Nick stepped out the car and ran over.

“Stahp thiies shiiih’! We hahve plyces we nayd t’ be!” Nick cried out, and then Tracy dropped the knot which unfurled itself almost immediately. Mick, Rowland, Tracy, and Phil circled around Nick, now united by a common cause.

“W-wait - mites, we don’t ‘av ta do this right now,” pleaded Nick, but it was too late. Within moments he was curled up on the ground sobbing as the quartet kicked him.Rowland smiled wryly as he landed perhaps the finest kick of his Nick-kicking career into Nick’s rib cage, resulting in an ear-splitting shriek.

“Even ya, Phil?! Even ya?!” He yelled through strangled cries. Phil did not respond. Loud, rubbery footsteps approached from behind.

“Oh mein Gott! Was ist los mit euch?!” Germanically exclaimed Blixa in German with great disapproval in his heavy German accent, looking at the Party with a disapproving look. He had his hands on his hips, just to drive home how much he did not approve of this. They all stopped kicking and stared at him.

“Wir können nicht so handeln,” he continued, and Rowland realized that he seemed to be the only person who couldn’t understand him.

“Ich denke,” he paused and made eye contact with everyone all at once, “wir brauchen Gras - oder so etwas,”

“The kraut’s right,” Mick sighed, “but where are we supposed to get it?”

“Rowland could probahbly foind someone,” Nick offered weakly.

“Get what?!” Suddenly everyone looked at Rowland like he was an idiot.

“Didn’t you hear what he fuckin’ said? Weed!”

“I. Really did not hear anything he said. I don’t know German, I mean it’s close to Yiddish and all but I just can’t get it,” Rowland stammered, and everyone’s glares sharpened, and he was hit with a collective barrage of “he is speaking English you insensitive whore! it’s not his fault his accent is so thick!”

Rowland remained silent.

Mick stood atop a trashcan full of empty beer cans.

“If we’re going out to score we’d, then we need some absolute losers to do the munchie run.” he authoritarianally announced with lots of authority.

Rowland saw Nick and Phil shudder, and there was no question of who was going to be sent on the munchie run.

“First of all, Nick is going,” he turned to Nick, “because you are the worst little man in this group, you stink, you suck, you stink and you suck, you’re quite possibly the lamest loser who has ever lamed. You are the bottom-feeder of this band. You are single-handedly the most disposable and detestable member. Your birth caused a sharp uptick in anti-natalistism, hell, even God cried when you were born,” Nick was already sobbing uncontrollably, and Mick finished with “However, you are very good at inconspicuously ordering large quantities of food, because no fast food worker would ever think a man like you would have friends to do drugs and eat with.”

Nick collapsed on the ground screaming between sobs and gasps. Phil trembled and Tracy let out deep guffaws as Rowland stood there, speechless, and his eyes caught those of the German man, who grimaced at him. Rowland looked away.

MICK turned to Phil.

“Phil, you’re going because Nick isn’t dependable enough to go by himself and you’re not cool enough to hang out with us, and uh,” he glanced at Blixa, who was still grimacing, “You’re going with them because we’re prejudiced against Europeans in rubber clown suits.”

Nick lifted his face from the asphalt and let out a delighted squeal.

“Oy, I’m not prejudiced,” said Rowland a bit meekly, but he was drowned out in the “HALT DO MAL DIE GUSCHE.” that European in the rubber clown suit bellowed shortly after.

“Jetzt tu do ma nicht so rumdikschn.” Mick said with a shrug. Before this could get any uglier, everyone was distracted by the sound of glass shattering. Tracy was already stealing another car somewhere in the blackness beyond the gas station.

“Always one step ahead,” Mick sighed as an engine revved and Tracy drove back into the light, revealing his catch.

It was a BMW, a well-bred BMW of high moral standing. A nice catch, by all means, and Rowland himself was actually quite proud of Tracy, and he expected everyone else to be as well - until he saw Blixa staring at the BMW like a terrified German in the headlights, which he literally was. He started hissing and baring his teeth, his light brown hair puffed up, and then he ran towards the BMW screaming incomprehensibly and clawed at it without restraint.

“Blixer! Stawp!” cried out Nick, scrambling up from the ground and chasing him around the BMW. It was around their tenth lap around the BMW that they all stopped watching and checked their phones or pigeons or whatever they had back in 1938. Rowland had not gotten any interesting messages because he has no friends. Rowland threw his pigeon across the parking lot and jumped in the air, shrieking “Fuck yeah!”

 

5 laps later, and Nick was already stumbling. Tracy had not left the vehicle, Rowland had already smoked a full pack of cigarettes, and Mick had left to go urinate on Phil, who was napping on the ground.

No matter how much he smoked, his head still hurt from Blixa’s shrieks.

2 laps later, and Phil woke up yelling. The poor fuck. The poor stupid fuck.

“Rowland, you ought to do something about this!” snapped Mick as he kicked Phil and stuck his entire foot down his throat.

Rowland walked, faster than any man could run, right in front of Blixa, who crashed into Rowland, and caused Nick to crash into them, leaving Blixa sandwiched between two Australians; it felt like a fate worse than dad.

“Oy’m sohry abeow’ thiies, mite. He cahn’t haelp ih’, ‘as a bahd heestoray weeth thaem BMWs,” Nick wrapped his arms around Blixa, who was still thrashing and screaming and pulled him towards the van, and Phil crawled behind them.

“Like we’d trust your lot with a nice car like this,” muttered Rowland racistly as he got into the backseat. He watched Mick walk towards the van and hand some papers he pulled out of nowhere to the munchie-runners, and then he came back and got in the passenger seat, and then Tracy hit the gas and slammed directly into the van and seemingly relished in the howls emitting from both the van and the car.

“WHOY THE ACTUAL FUCKK WOULD YA DO THAHT?!! YAH FUCKIN ASSHOLES!” & “GASKAMMER! JETZT!” came from the van along with something that sounded like an actual wolf’s howl, and Rowland just groaned “Oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyysh” really loudly.

 

Tracy kept accelerating into the van until the BMW eventually pushed it out the way, and then he went flying through the woods.

“Where are we even going?” asked Tracy as he drove through thirteen consecutive trees.

“Why are you asking? You’re driving!” shouted Mick

Rowland shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m not asking you,” he cut his eyes at Mick, and gestured to Rowland. “I’m asking him, he knows where the dealers are ,”

Rowland froze in the face of his new dilemma. He’d either have to admit his ignorance of drug dealers in Germany, or he’d have to make something up and pray. “Rowland!” he barked, and he flinched.

“There’s a mishuggener in Hamburg, which is nearby,” his balls grew heavier with his lies, “and his name is, uh, Andrew.”

“Andrew?” Mick quirked his eyebrow. Rowland wiped away a bead of sweat.

“Andrew Eldritch.”

Everyone in the car was silent.

“There can only be one person in Hamburg with a goofy name like that, ought to be an easy find,” Tracy drove through a mountain.

Rowland cursed himself under his breath.

 

Several hours had passed. The Munchie-Runners had just crossed the border and were going 2mph above the speed limit.

“Why did Mick specifically ask for stuff from France?” Phil groaned amid Nick and Blixa’s chattering and their joint-custody anime theme song CD blaring, his complaint lost among the fucking Tokyo Ghoul theme song or some shit and what sounded like a VERY serious conversation about getting the clap.

“Weah heah!” yelled Nick as he parked the van directly in front of the grocery store’s doors, and Blixa ejected from his seat and out the windshield and through the glass door of the grocery store with a shrill “Jiiipiiiiiiii!”

“Blixa! Geh’ bahck heah, baka!” Nick yelled.

“Nein! Fich dich! Ich mache was ich will!” Blixa crawled through the hole in the windshield and got back in his seat. Then, with an alarming amount of strength, Nick stretched and twisted his arms to unnatural proportions, bones cracking all the while, and grabbed Phil and slung him through the windshield. Phil hit the ground with a shriek as the glass shards jabbed into his skin in a way that was profoundly uncomfortable, and then yelped when one he felt a paper airplane hit his cheek. He pulled himself up and unraveled the paper, seeing that it was a grocery list.

Nick stuck almost his entire body out the windshield and leaned into Phil.

“Theah's a Maccas nawt too fah frawm heah, we'll be bahck in a teeck, tyke ih' aysy mite!” Nick leaned back, and Phil barely processed a thing. Blixa looked at him, smiled uncharacteristically, waved daintily and said “Bis spater!”, and before Phil could respond Nick had already sped off. 

“Hat er Geld?” said Blixa, his tone suddenly serious. He stared at Nick, who refused to look back at him. After a moment, there was an enthusiastic “Nup!” and Nick gave him an inappropriately blithe grin.

“Du dumme Schlampe... Ich liebe das.”

Within minutes, they could both see the sign, but the black enters beneath spelled out “TEMPORARILY CLOSED”.

“‘Temporarily closed’?!” they both cried out, and as they got closer they saw that the entire building was gone.

“Was zum Teufel?” Blixa shook his head, but he accepted this, but the man next to him did not.

“Taemporarily closed? Whot koind of fuckin mahdness is thiies? "Oh, yayh, we nayd t' close daown faw a leettle whoile because ahh fuckin buildin grew cheecken laegs and wohked off!", some rayl Buyba Yuyga shiieh' thaht is! Fuckin unheenged, thaese people are,” he fumed as he gripped the steering wheel with whitening knuckles.

“Es ist nur eine Gebäude,” he shrugged as Nick drove on where the next “Maccas” ought to be, which would have been much simpler if it wasn’t located in a town that was an hour away.

The whole hour, Nick kept bringing up the absent McDonald’s.

“Taemporarily closed, on a fuckin hiatus moah loike,” he grumbled.

“Fang nicht an!”

“Oy mayn - whaht the haell hahppaened theah? Diied thy just fuckin aehleeft the buildin eow' of theah? Loike, diied Maccas hahve a bahd hot attahck and thy hahd t' floy ih' t' the hawspitul?” He shook his head and mumbled, “Oy cahn't tyke thiies, mite...”

“Dann nimm es nicht!” Blixa snapped, tearing one of his many belts off and somehow ripping the leather in half. He nibbled on it in what appeared to be an attempt to self-soothe, and Nick resolved not to speak for two minutes. Then he pulled into the comically small drive through. He parked in front of the speaker and then grabbed Blixa, turned him upside down, and rattled him. Loose scrap metal and screws fell from the pockets of his rubber salopettes and onto his seat. He flopped over like a corpse as soon as Nick released him, and then the fucking dag stuffed his hands into his pockets, and when he found nothing, pried Blixa’s mouth open and peered down his throat as he screamed. He frowned and closed his friend’s mouth, patting his chin apologetically and then slid his hand under his own Reagan-Bush shirt, then pulled it out and checked the pockets of his redjeans, raising his eyebrows in pleasure as soon as his skin made contact with the paper.

Nick pulled out one of Mick’s lists, fumbled with it, and opened the crumbled piece of paper. He rolled down the window, and nearly fell over from the volume of the speaker.

“BONJOUR?! EST-CE QUE QUELQU'UN EST LÀ?! PEUX-TU M'ENTENDRE?!”

Apparently, they had been trying to take his order for 5 minutes now while he sat in the middle of the drive-thru and he had been unintentionally ignoring them.

“Bawnjoah, Oy'd loike t' geh', ahh,”

“Je ne comprends pas.”

Nick scowled, readjusted himself, and started to repeat slowly and clearly in a mangled accent.

“Bahwnjoah, oy'd loike t' geh', ahhh, 42 McCheeckens, hahwld ze cheecken, a Foileh'-o-Feesh weeth just ze feesh ahnd kaetchup, ahnd um, 2 chaizebuhgahhs weeth ahpple sloices eenstayd of peeckles, ahnd a smahhl cup of Hoi-C.”

“Will that be all?” an extremely French voice responded. Nick thought about it really hard.

“Oy'd loike t' ahdd 60 lahhge froys ahnd a lahhge stuhgeon tea. zaht'll be ooll.”

The French voice started to read the order back to him,

“62 McChickens without chicken, 2 Filet-o-Fishes with only mustard and fish, a cheeseburger with nothing but pickles and apple slices, 8 medium cups of Hi-C, 50 large fries, a Happy Meal with nuggets and a girls’ toy, 8 side salads, an Egg White Delight without the biscuit, a small cup of mayonnaise, and a large Sturgeon Tea, is this correct?”

“Yup!”

“That’ll be ¥422 euros. Since that’s a horrifically large order, it’s going to take a while. You may not dispute this. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.” Nick thought that was fair enough, and seeing as nobody else was in the drive thru he just stayed parked where he was. He was then startled by a vibrating in his pocket, and Blixa was so startled he started screaming.

Nick pulled the gas station condom out of his pocket and pressed it against his ear.

“Nick, where the FUCK are you?!” cried Phil from the other end - in a distant grocery store, he was huddled up on the floor next to his shopping cart, holding a banana against his ear in the middle of the canned goods aisle.

“Weah witein faw ahh ordah at Maccas - haow' s ih' ‘angin', Phil? Whaht ahh yah up t'?”

“You didn’t leave me with any fucking money! I can’t pay for this shit on me own, when are you gonna get back?!”

“In a teeck, Phil, in a fuckin teeck. If yaw sao desperyte t' pie naow, Oy'm ceht'n yah cahn come up weeth the monay on yoah own. Yaw a biieg boy aftah ooll,”

“How am I supposed to come up with £10,000 ‘in a tick’?! Why did Mick ask for a raw fish and 30 bags of frozen french fries?! We can’t even cook this shit!”

“'cause Mick loikes hiies froys cawld and crunchy, and Tracy loikes ih' raw. It's nawt thaht cawmplex.”

“I feel like they should have redirected some of their budget to vegetals. Like maybe I need to put some of these fries and boxes of frozen lasagna back.”

“If you touch a single fucking cucunger I will fuck you and your whole family to death! I will kill you!” Nick shouted into the condom, momentarily losing his accent.

“Do it pussy, I’m headed towards the producetions aisle right fucking now. I’m grabbing a cucunger, and a zucchinkus too!”

“Zucchinkus?! That’s too fucking far, mate, if you’re getting fuckin cucungers AND zucchinkuses from the producetions aisle, I’m not paying for that shit! Nobody will!”

“English really is your first language, huh,” deadpanned Blixa in perfect, almost accent-less English.

“HI BLIXA! NICK, TELL MISS BLIXA I SAID HI!” Phil shrieked into Nick’s ear through the condom.

Nick screamed in rage and hurled the condom out of his window and through the menu board.

“He side t' taell yah ‘Hi’.”

“Ich hätte es zurückgesagt, wenn Sie das Kondom nicht geworfen hätten.” he groaned. Nick ignored him.

“Whaht koind of frayk would munch on cucungahs and zuccheenkus?”

 

 

There was something soothing, perhaps even transformative about a long car ride in a stolen BMW where the driver is going hundreds of kilometers over the speed limit. Since he was a back-seat rider, he had the most liberty of the three to be elsewhere.

Rowland was sitting in a pristine, blue room that was almost empty, apart from a single blue counter. A somewhat tall young man with long brown hair and a square jawline stood behind it, wearing round black sunglasses and a black turtleneck underneath a torn up safety-pinned-to-hell-and-back jacket with an anarchy symbol painted on it and a word Rowland couldn’t read. He was holding some kind of strange, slightly egg-shaped contraption with a long screw holding the top far above the body of the machine which had the words “Slap Chop” printed on it.

«Доброе вечер, лжец.»

Rowland almost understood what he said, but when he opened his mouth to respond no sound came out. His mouth was moving, he was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it and neither could the man in front of him.

The man behind the counter pulled out two hard boiled eggs and positioned the contraption over them.

«Слэп,» he began, and as he slammed his hand onto the top he screamed «ЧОП!» and Rowland felt a dull, empathetic ache throughout his body as he saw the evenly chopped eggs through the clear plastic, and then the man started screaming «СЛЕП ЧОП!» over and over as he repeatedly slammed the top, slicing the eggs into a finer consistency with each slap, and, God - was he hallucinating? The blue room looked more and more purplish by the second.

The man stopped slapping and lifted the Slap Chop from the diced eggs, and then he pulled out walnuts and repeated the slapping and screaming process and Rowland forced himself to turn away, only to find himself looking right back at the Slap-Chopping Siberian.

He stood up abruptly and knocked the chair beneath him to the floor and turn and run, but it was like the counter and the man were rotating around him, and even if he ran towards him he stayed the perfect distance away, ignoring him in favor of yelling the same two words over and over and slap-chopping. The helplessness of his situation made him feel cored like an apple, an uncomfortable and forced hollowness. His eyes were stinging - he couldn’t be crying over something as minor as this - but he was. Rowland fell to the ground and let the tears stream down his face, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to sob. He heard the slapping stop, the noise of something being brushed away, and then two exaggerated popping noises, and he looked up and through his blurry vision he saw the man holding two white spheres in his hands, and the room was bright red, and the counter was too. Rowland wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at the man, who looked back at him with empty sockets. He was holding his eyes, and he was holding the Slap Chop.

He wanted to say something, he couldn’t say something, not at the moment, the man put his eyes on the counter and positioned the Slap Chop.

«ЛЖЕЦ!» he called out with each slap, repeating over and over and over until Rowland screamed it too.

«ВЫ - ЛЖЕЦ!» said the man,

«Я - ЛЖЕЦ!» said Rowland.

Everything Rowland tried to say earlier echoed throughout the room at a deafening volume, and all he could do was yell along. The man threw the Slap Chop away, and began grabbing everything he had chopped and pelted Rowland with it.

«ЛЖЕЦ!»

«ЛЖЕЦ!»

«ЛЖЕЦ!»

«Я - ЛЖЕЦ!»

“ROWLAND YOU IGNORANT SLUT!” screamed Mick, and Rowland woke up screaming, too.

«Я УБЬЮ ТЕБЯ, МУДАК!» Rowland blindly swung his arms at an unaffected Mick, who just moved out of the way.

“What’s your fucking problem?” Before he could get an answer, “Whatever - we just need some details on your guy. You didn’t tell us much and we’re a quarter of the way to Hamburg.”

Rowland paused and thought of something that sounded convincing, but he was fixated on his stress-dream.

“He wears...sunglasses? Like almost all the time -”

“That’s not much to go on,” Mick groaned, and then he squinted at him, “why do you sound so unsure? You’re acting like you don’t know this guy!”

“To be fair, I haven’t seen him in a long time,” Rowland glared back and crossed his arms, “it’s not like I usually go outside of Berlin to score!”

“Well, what do you remember of this Eldritch guy?”

Rowland paused, uncrossing one of his arms and picking at the black strap of his lace-trimmed camisole top.

“He’s got somewhat long black hair, he’s sickly-pale, and he’s shaped kind of like a bean-pole, and he wears a lot of uh. Florals. Lots of leather, too,” Rowland could physically feel Mick’s scrutinizing glare, as well as the growing weight in his groin.

“Can’t trust a man who wears florals, ‘cause he’ll probably piss in your drink and in your mother when you’re not lookin’.” Tracy commented, and they both looked at him kind of weird but didn’t respond.

“He has a really deep voice. Doesn’t stay in one place for too long, smells kind of like salt and steel-“

“How do you know what he smells like?” Mick interrupted.

Rowland’s gaze burned like ice and he felt some kind of deep, primordial feeling in the core of his chest. Something that had been ruminating in the dark of him before he was even born. His words didn’t even feel like his own at first, yet they felt more natural than any other utterance he had let out in his entire life.

«Почему почемучка почемучкает?»

 

Nick pulled up to the drive-thru window and peered into the complete darkness within, and it seemed as if there was nothing inside - and then he heard a gun cocking and a real hand came out the window and pointed a real gun in his face. He could not see anything beyond the arm that was hanging halfway out the drive-thru window.

“Give me all your fucking money!” the same voice that took their order yelled, and Nick sweated profusely and froze.

“I said,” the voice started to repeat. Nick glanced at Blixa, who remained calm, and back at the hand, “Give,” Blixa pulled the black ribbon around his neck loose, and allowed it to fall to his side, “M-me,” the voice stuttered as Blixa started to unbutton his shirt, “Your...” Blixa pulled his shirt open and the voice began screaming in horror as the hand dropped the gun on the ground and retreated into the darkness.

“PUT IT BACK ON! PUT IT BACK ON! PUT IT BACK!” it begged.

“Dann gib uns unsere Essen!” Blixa shouted as he pulled a glock out of his bra and aiming it at the window, and within moments there were two hands handing over everything they ordered to Nick, who passed them to Blixa, who put most of everything in the back of the van, with the exception of the bags of fries and the beverages. Nick grabbed his drink to take a sip, but in his enthusiasm he accidentally sucked really hard on his straw which caused him to almost choke on his Sturgeon Tea and he violently coughed up the viscous liquid all over himself as he hit the gas, speeding away from the window without paying.

“Nani the fuck? Seence whaen diied yah hahve a gun?” Nick asked through gags.

“Oh,” Blixa stroked the glock in a way that suggested admiration or affection, and a smile crept up on his face, “Ich habe eine Polizisten getötet, also hat Mufti es für mich besorgt.”

“Waell, thaht was noice of hiiem.” he shrugged in a sad attempt to mask his own envy with indifference, which he almost immediately broke with a morose mumble of “Moy friends ahh nevah thaht noice t' me.”

Blixa laughed at him like one would laugh at a child’s naïveté, and he wasn’t sure why - what did he say wrong? -He didn’t have time to dwell on that, he needed to get to the milkshake place. It was the most mundane thing Mick had sent them after, and it was actually closer to the grocery store Phil was stuck at, so perhaps life for the munchie-runners was not so difficult after all, until Nick did something he really shouldn’t have once they were within minutes of reaching the milkshake place.

“Thaht taemporarily closed Maccas bahck theah is just fuckin bizahre, isn't ih' Blix? It's loike thy caehd enough t' destroy the buildin buh' thy deedn't caeh enough t' tyke daown the fuckin sign, aw mybee thy just laeft ih' theah as some joke -“

“Hör auf darüber zu reden!”

“Oy cahn't stawp, love! Oy hahve naevah, in moy entuyah loife, encountuhd somethin thaht puhplexin! Ih' cuypchuhs me! Ih' unduhstahnds me!”

“Halt deine scheiß Fresse!” he screeched, having thoroughly lost it, and then the tires screeched, and Nick stopped at a random street corner.

“Oolroigh' Yah fuckin **WHORE** , geh' the fuck eow'ta moy vahn and stie on yoah hookah cohnah faw a leettle biieh'! mybee thaen yah'll cahlm yoah cawck and stawp restreectin moy fray spaych loike yaw some koinda Ayst-Sovieh'-Guhmahn cawmmie!”

Blixa got out on the corner with a huff and stood there with crossed arms, glaring at Nick through the window.

“Oo-fuckin-roo, mite!” he drove away, leaving Blixa on his hooker corner. For now, Nick was going to become unimportant, because milkshakes are boring. However, “boring” does not always mean “unimportant”.

 

Phil had put back much of what was originally on the list. Now there was only a pack of raw tuna as opposed to a whole fish, 5 bags of frozen fries instead of 30, 1 frozen lasagna, and a couple of pounds of cucumbers and zucchinis, because they were on sale. He had cut the price from the thousands down to just the hundreds (French groceries are expensive), but he had completely fucked himself out of financial help and was probably going to be beaten when he got back. It didn’t matter to him though, it’s not like he had much else to lose - at least he didn’t have to earn as much money.

Phil had amassed a good £100 from merely pickpocketing random customers with his tongue alone, snatching loose change off the floor, as well as selling a single kidney to one of the butchers. Neither of these things were dignified or particularly legitimate means, but it had been a long time since he worked a pole and he’d prefer to keep it that way.

He stalked through the store with his groceries, and observed the other customers. There were strange men with shaggy hair who stunk so heavily of divorce - and even Phil knew divorce had a smell. It’s the scent of pathetic straight men who relied on their wives to wash their clothes and now that she’s gone, all they can do is spray on cheap cologne or cans of Febreze to cover up the stench of their own desolation and helplessness.

Of course, there was also a group of old women who were definitely on meth tossing a whole raw chicken around like a basketball, and at least 3 different children who looked exactly like Nick Cave, whom he came close to throttling on each occasion, and in front of them there was a very short but imposing 60-something-year-old woman in a banana costume.

“That’s a lot of zucchinis for one boy. Are you sure you can afford them?” she asked.

“No.” Phil’s response was perhaps too hasty and too blunt, and he saw an opportunistic gleam in her uncomfortably piercing eyes.

“Well, handsome,” Phil was not handsome, “maybe we could help each other out,” she murmured, he tensed up, and she looked him in the eyes.

“Would you be willing to...” Phil braced himself, “sell me one of your shoes for £50? Maybe both for £150?”

He shrugged and immediately kicked them off and she stuffed the euro notes in his hands, grabbed the shoes, and ran off shrieking. Soon, one of the divorced men approached him and he felt a bit light-heated as soon as the noxious fumes surrounding the man made contact with him.

“I’ll buy your zebra print jacket for £200.”

Phil took off his jacket, and handed it to the man who was most definitely in need of a clean jacket he didn’t have to spray cologne on yet. The man handed him the money and left. As he was thumbing through his earnings, he heard footsteps approaching him from all directions, offering to buy his clothing for increasing amounts of money.

It was easy to give up things like his jacket and shoes, a little more difficult to just hand over things like his shirt and his belt, but now he had to contend with a crowd who wanted his pants. He had earned an absurdly easy £800 already, but he needed £200 more - and the potential buyers offered more than enough, but he wasn’t sure just how much of his dignity he was about to sell.

“I’ll give you £50,000 for the pants.” said one of the Nick Cave children. Phil froze and the crowd’s clamoring went silent. Then Phil shrugged and tore the pants off his body, but whipped the child as it reached out for the fabric. He whipped it again and again like a piñata until it actually exploded like one, sending euros flying everywhere. The store filled with French shrieking, some clamoring towards the apparent child-murderer and some ducking down to snatch cash. Phil ducked down and scrambled for at least three £100 notes, but as he reached for the third one a pale hand clamped around his wrist, and when he looked up he saw it was none other than Robert Smith, who wailed at him. The ones screaming “MURDERER!” in at least 13 different languages were approaching, and Robert Smith wouldn’t budge no matter how hard Phil tried to shake him off. Phil pulled, pushed, shoved, screamed, to no avail because Robert Smith is very strong and powerful. Phil reached for his basket and pulled out a cucumber, brandishing it like a green phallic dagger. Robert hissed and recoiled, but the strength of his resolve caused Phil’s arm to painlessly pop out of the socket like the plastic arm of a barbie doll - which it apparently, literally was. Phil shrieked and with one arm scrounged up the rest of the money, stuffed it into his basket, and scrambled away, weaving himself around and underneath the leagues of divorced men as their aroma would hopefully hinder the crowd of Nick-Cave-child-avenging crackheads behind him. He ran through several aisles, as he had already forgotten the layout of the store. iI took him until he hit the dark, desolate, international foods aisle, that he felt a profound dread, a gut-sinking sensation, after having to run at least two miles through an extended section of the kosher food section that was entirely dedicated to what was perhaps the saddest thing in the history of the Jewish people: gefilte fish floating in a cloudy, ambiguous brine, locked away in a clear glass jar to contain yet pridefully display its shameful existence.

He almost collapsed once he got to the register, and through gasps of air he was able to conduct his business with the apathetic French cashier with a gun as one normally would, with the standard exchange of “fuck you and your groceries” and “i’m fine and so was everything else, thank you” and “your total is i’m going to shtup your father and give you 3 new siblings and an uncle. give me money. you’re not getting change” which ends with him giving the cashier the money and the cashier shooting him, but since Phil is a trooper he takes it like a twink.

“Have a horrible day, please die on your way out,” the cashier courteously implored him, and he smiled back and nodded and said “you too!” as he ran out with his groceries. French cashiers are a bit strange, thought Phil, the screams behind him growing louder.

 

Phil galloped down the litter-covered street, the cool air mauling his exposed flesh, and he turned a corner and spotted a figure at the other the corner, who let out a shriek and waved at him - Blixa.

He accelerated towards the German half-naked and screaming, glad to see someone who was just a little bit sane, somewhat sober, somewhat familiar yet didn’t look like Nick Cave, and didn’t carry the scent of divorce.

As soon as he got within an arm’s length of Blixa, he dropped the bags to his side and cried tears of relief before the grinning kraut, who raised his hand high and bought it down savagely, smacking Phil’s ass so hard he fell down and DIED. And then he got up.

“Phiiil,” he beamed, and then hardened in more ways than one with concern “Wo sind Deine Kleider?”

Blixa gestured to Phil’s zebra print briefs.

“I had to sell them, nearly died too,” Phil shrugged and within moments Blixa had already took off his shirt and draped it over him, and since the German was really really really tall it covered the no-longer-bare man like a cloak. He leaned down and adjusted the shirt so it framed Phil’s face well, and with an small, saccharine smile he whispered very seductively (no homo) “Ah, meine kleine Russin!” he pulled back and picked up the groceries and Phil burst into tears like he was just bawling and weeping and also sobbing right there because nobody had treated him like that in several years. Nobody had clothed him like that, nobody picked up his groceries like that, and nobody, and we mean absolutely nobody, and especially not by (someone he assumed was) a woman, had ever called him their little Russian lady. He was sobbing so loudly that he didn’t hear the sound of the motor as the van slammed into him. His sobs turned into shrieks as he clung onto the bottom of the van, and he heard a window roll down which caused the anime music from earlier to blare outside of the van as opposed to being completely contained.

“Oi!” Nick yelled, and Blixa wordlessly got in the van, ignoring Phil’s cries.

Nick didn’t even look at the groceries when Blixa tossed them into the back, and he accelerated at a rather horrific speed before Blixa could even close his door.

“Oy cohled the uhthahs eahlier, and thy side thyah gaowin t' Hahmbuhg because Rowland knaows a guy theah,” he said as he turned the heater onto it’s maximum setting.

30 minutes passed, and neither of them seemed concerned by the bumps and screams below them.

“Wheah’s Phil? Nao, moah impohtahntly, wheah is yoah shuht?”

Blixa shrugged.

“Ich weiß nicht, wo Phil ist. Ich sah ihn und dann verschwand er. Ich warf mein Hemd weg, weil es sich zu heiß anfühlte, und ich fühlte mich auch hasserfüllt,” the German reached for the AC knob to turn off the heat,

“Ich bin auch heiß,” Nick offered sympathetically and Blixa looked up from the AC to look Nick dead in the eyes as he drove into a cornfield.

“No, you’re hideous.” said Blixa, and then they flew towards Hamburg at a speed that neither the van or the Autobahn could take.

 

Rowland’s seat, the entire backseat, was soaking with his sweat. The BMW was somehow lodged tightly between two bricks, yet nobody seemed to be harmed, and Mick got out onto the streets of the really bad part of Hamburg without trouble. He couldn’t bring himself out, because he knew what would happen. He stared at his knees and had nearly picked the lace off his top, until he saw Tracy in his peripheral vision, leaning towards him but not in a way that was too uncomfortably intimate but enough to signify that he was trying to talk to Rowland specifically but not in an indirect way, you know?

“Rowland,” his tone was calm and his demeanor nearly suggested humility, “I want to apologize about what happened earlier, I shouldn’t have lashed out like that. I may have been upset that I had to shit in a manhole and that I remembered how transphobic our society is, but that didn’t mean I had to take it out on you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, we all make mistakes...wait, are you going to apologize to -“

“I will not apologize to Mick, because his eyebrows suck and he’s mean.” Tracy responded bluntly, and then he got out.

“Get the fuck out of the stolen car, wacko!” screamed Mick in the middle of the skreet in front of 24 families with children, all weeping.

“I will, please just give me a moment,” he pleaded from within the car as he literally mopped the sweat off of him, trying to determine the depth of his grave as he did so.

“Thou art a crackwhore and so is thy father!” yelled Tracy for literally no reason, and then all the children repeated louder than he did, and Rowland wormed out of the window. He struggled to hold himself up and joined the other men with his eyes glued to the ground.

“Where can we find Eldritch?” asked the naked man, and he looked up with a puzzled expression and a quick but wholehearted “huh?”.

“Your guy!” he snapped, and Rowland remembered.

“Oh, him? He’s a bit of an, er,” he paused and seemingly shrunk into his leopard print coat, “he’s a rolling stone? Doesn’t, um, grow moss - usually I don’t see him covered in actual moss, even though he likes places that are...” Mick glared at him, and he trembled.

“He likes places that are dark, really dark, and, uh, damp. Damp! Dark and damp!”The weight was getting unbearable.

“Well, let’s find somewhere dark and damp!” Tracy physically dragged the two down the nearest shady looking street, which was a bit humid.

“He should be nearby, this place actually looks kind of familiar,” a tangy scent hit his very large nose as the weight increased. He needed to stop lying. He couldn’t stop.

“How are his prices?” asked Tracy. Rowland forced a smile and said “They’re, um, pretty alright,” He fell to his knees, unable to hold himself up, and he made eye contact with the cracks in the concrete to avoid the now disappointed gaze of his companions.

Mick kneeled next to him and put a hand on his shoulder, leaned in, and then grabbed Rowland’s balls, to which he responded with ayelp.

“These balls,” he glowered, “these are the balls of a liar! Rowland Howard!”

Mick’s grips tightened with rage and Tracy took off his cowboy hat. He pulled his bass out from the hat and held it over the crumbling man’s neck like an executioner with his axe.

“Hey now, hey now now,” a deep voice echoed from the nearest alleyway, and although the grips did not loosen the weight lightened as the footsteps grew louder, and from the shadows emerged a floral-clad leather-armored sunglasses-wearing fellow with flowing hair that was flowing.

“Who the mothering fuck are you, bitch?” Mick snarled as he attempted to shield his current victim with his bare ass.

“Andrew Eldritch, pleased to meet you,” Rowland felt like he could stand again, and his privates felt like they were floating, “Andrew Eldritch, pleased to meet you, Andrew Eldritch, pleased to meet you, Andrew Eldritch, pleased to meet you, Andrew Eldritch, pleased to meet you, Andrew Eldritch,”

“We get it.” Mick snapped as he got up along with Rowland. Tracy put the bass back into the hat and pulled out a Nokia, which he proceeded to dial Nick’s number with and relay their exact coordinates, even though Nick was likely too stupid to understand them.

“I heard you calling, Rowly-land,” Eldritch smiled and repeated himself at least nine more 10s. Rowland had never seen or met this man in his entire life - it was like he was group-hallucinating his own OC.

“Crack rock again I imagine? Is crack rock, crack rock, crack rock, what you want?”

“N—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no😳,” Rowland’s face flushed as Mick and Tracy gave him a weird look, “We want we’d.”

“Anh, anh, anh,” he moaned with understanding, and turned to his damp alleyway.

“Please darkly follow me into this dark and damp dark alleyway, which is very dark, very dark, so dark,” he said as he walked back into the shadows, and the gang followed behind him.

They couldn’t see too well, because it was dark in the alleyway, so they stood there awkwardly and stared at the place Eldritch might be. It felt like it had just rained, but only in the alleyway, and the scent of wet concrete filled the air.

“I have one very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very large bag of marianjuanis. You know how much to pay me.” he said crypticicalicticalliscalictically.

“I forgot,” said Rowland sheepishly, and he could physically feel how the air around them changed.

“YOU FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!” wailed Eldritch and he banged on something, “Speed! I want - no, need - speed!” He yelled so loudly that they all nearly fell over.

“I don’t think we remembered to bring enough, landtslayt,” his attempts to smooth over this conflict and calm “his” dealer didn’t feel effective.

“Just one line! All I need! Just one line! All I n-“

“We don’t have the line, we do have the money for you to get it,” Rowland gestured towards Tracy who was pulling thousands of deutschmarks from his hat.

“YOU’RE THE ONLY FUCKING SPEED DEALER IN HAMBURG AND YOU’RE TELLING ME TO JUST GO BUY IT?! YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE YOUR OWN PRODUCT!” Eldritch was fuming. The darkness of the alleyway caused the seeing sense to become almost completely useless, and in the absence of the seeing sense the hearing one had compensated. The sound of Eldritch pulling something from his pocket, the sound of the pistol cocking, the fear it inspired. They all turned towards where they came and ran, and Eldritch started shooting. Tracy had put everything back in his hat and the moment he put it back on his head he turned around and grabbed Rowland and Mick, practically bear hugging them both as he turned back and ran out. The bullets literally reflected off of Tracy and hit Eldritch, but then his bullets also reflected off of him and back onto Tracy so it was like volleyball but it was volleybullet.

Eldritch continued shooting and Tracy started slipping on moss so he hurled only Rowland out of the alleyway because he did not care if Mick died. Rowland’s face landed directly into a stop sign and his face flattened and stuck to it. He struggled to get free as the gunshots drew closer but his face felt like semi-dry gum under a desk, but he felt almost a slight ‘give’ to the metal as Tracy hooted’n’hollered and Mick shrieked like a caribou, and his face peeled away slowly and painfully. He fell off the sign with a reddened face and reddened eyes, and as he lay on his back he made direct eye contact with Tracy who was now on the ground with the man he was holding crushed beneath him. Eldritch had stopped firing and was presumably reloading, and in his daze he could imagine the gunman standing somewhere in the mist with a vexed grimace and a pair of eyes that were not unlike his own, despite their being obscured. Rowland may have had a mild concussion. He thought of Nick’s eyes. He felt so enraged he tried to get up, and then he heard the sound of a vehicle moving towards him and he snapped his head and also his neck and his colon to the left only to see a tire parked barely an inch from his beak-like schnoz.

The van’s door flew off, and Nick flung himself out.

“Weah ba-“ Eldritch fired again, rapidly, and Rowland watched as Nick took two steps back and fell onto the pavement, and nobody spoke, nobody did anything, Eldritch even stopped shooting.

Blixa was glued to the passenger seat as was Mick and Tracy to the ground, as Phil was to the bottom of the van and now as Eldritch who clung to the wall. Rowland, sat there and watched as Nick violently convulsed and bled and frothed his scarlet mouth-foam and gargled in a way that seemed dramatic and exaggerated, as Nick would do, and as all gunshot victims do - especially when their torso had about as many holes as a blood honeycomb. He turned towards the alleyway and saw the figure of Andrew Eldritch on fingers-and-toes skittering up the wall and into the ink of the night. Tracy and Mick had gotten up and scurried like rats to Nick’s shambling body, Blixa joined them and even Phil poked his head out from under the van, forming a circle around the man that Rowland simply refused to be a part of.

They seemed shocked yet solemn, but not enough to show any serious emotions - until Mick burst into tears.

“You idiot! You worthless idiot! You were so good at being a piece of shit, now who else will we have to be as awful as you were?!” he screamed as if Nick was dead, even though he was quite alive. Tracy was restraining him as he shrieked and sobbed and attempted to lunge at a shaking and blood-soaked Nick. Rowland crept around them, and in passing the red reminded of how he once spilled borscht on himself at his bubbe’s house. He didn’t have a bubbe, and he had never even seen a pot of borscht. He heard Tracy attempting to comfort Mick with a “he’s not dead yet, if we call the wee-woo wagon he’ll probably be fine.”

He went into the van and looked through the munchies - they didn’t even have weed, but his sweet tooth was getting the best of him.

He beelined past the McDonalds and the groceries and looked at the milkshakes, still in their carrier.

There was Phil’s peanut butter shake and Blixa’s strawberry shake, even Nick’s disgusting french fry shake and Mick & Tracy’s dubious “cowtails” (cocktail milkshakes), but when he got to the milkshake that was supposed to be his - supposed to be tobacco-flavored - he instead found banana. Banana. Nick knew what he wanted, Mick knew what they would have wanted when he made the list, and everyone, even every single one of god’s angels, knew Rowland abhorred bananas. It had such a disgusting flavor, such a repulsive aroma and texture, even the peel on the damn fruit had such a visually arresting color, and Nick deliberately chose to get him a banana milkshake. His eyes were crimson red, not with the pain and tears from before, but with pure, unadulterated rage.

“Nick Cave, you fucking PIG!” he howled as he stormed out of the van with the milkshake in hand. He coughed in response and Rowland dumped the artificially “banana” (see: piss) colored shake on his head, and then he lunged at him and everyone turned around and pretended not to hear the sounds of their favorite guitarist beating their least favorite frontman to death, instead tuning into Mick’s crying. Consistent, louder than before, and long-lasting.

 

“Hey,” Blixa turned to Tracy and looked at him quizzically.

“Do you know a guy?” he asked, and a smile crept up on the critter’s face.

“Ja, ich kenne.”

 

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**Author's Note:**

> Nick Cave did die, but he was ultimately replaced by a clone who was very much like the original in terms of disgustingness and stupidity, but he did not have such a thick and funetik accent. Hairspray did not work on him as effectively as it used to and his creative differences became too much to bear, and thus the Birthday Party literally exploded. At least Blixa’s English improved, even if it cost him his stability.
> 
> (yes, this is kind of a prequel to the marriage mishap and by extension mach kaputt was euch kaputt mach. yes, they all exist in the same timeline.)


End file.
